


On The Road Again

by SilviaKundera



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Character of Color, F/M, Road Trip, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-04
Updated: 2005-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilviaKundera/pseuds/SilviaKundera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Veronica and Weevil go on a little journey, post Season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On The Road Again

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this very soon after the Veronica Mars S1 finale aired, when we had no idea who was at the door or what happened to Logan at the bridge. Not Season 2 compliant.

_"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go."_  
\- Jack Kerouac

 

It's like waking from a dream, into a dream with Weevil at Veronica's door, and she smiles soft and small, but then the smile tilts, skews, and she's a little confused. Logan was supposed to be with him, she had _told_ him where Logan would be, and--

And Weevil says he's fine, he's at Duncan's (Weevil thought that was best, better than home), and Logan doesn't want to see her. Weevil says sorry, sorry, sorry, and it looks like he means it, because then he stops and doesn't say anything.

He looks like he wants to hug her, but he can't. He doesn't have the practice of those kinds of hugs and these situations. He's not used to not fixing things for her. He must not, always, but she always says thank you like he has (or does that tough/not tough glare like he hasn't, but he doesn't believe her).

She's so quiet, so he leaves.

-

Logan isn't at school the next morning, or that afternoon, and she skips two classes to go to Duncan's house. It's awkward, sitting on the patio with maid fetched lemonade, and it wasn't rape (she knows, she knows, she believes him) but she didn't expect that she doesn't want him to touch her too much. It feels funny. He says, "Logan?" with an odd far away tone, and Duncan hasn't seen him since. Everything.

She stumbles outside -- quick excuses, apologies, I'll call you, see you later when I'm that girl you used to know -- and shiny metal glints peer out from the bushes. Sun glancing off the patches of the motorcycle that aren't covered by leaves, like a beacon, and he's so _stupid_ that she wants to hit him. She does smack him, actually, on the back of his neck (he's not facing her), and tells him that he's an asshole.

Weevil doesn't argue, he turns and says, "This is where I do that head tilting thing," and she almost laughs, and then she does, but she's still angry.

"You lied to me."

Weevil shrugs. He's never truly been frightened of her. It's a trust thing, she thinks, and it makes her more furious. It's something she can't have, can't do. She makes it there at the end, when it matters (most of the time, except -- she's not thinking about that), but right now she thinks maybe he lied. She should think more, but she doesn't. Ever.

Only the small stuff.

He shouldn't trust that she knows he did nothing to Logan. He _could_ have done something to Logan. He should have, if he didn't trust _her_ , implicitly, when she said (and nothing else), "It wasn't him."

Veronica almost hates him for this.

She doesn't understand why it can never be simple. She doesn't want to hear about Lamb, and they were at Weevil's house, they spoke to his grandma, his nephew ( _'do you know what happens to little kids that lie? They lock them away in itsy bitsy cages and give them shock treatments until those kids know how to be good'_ ), and they know he was at the bridge. They know no one has seen Logan since.

"Tell me _everything_ , she says, after he's finished.

He answers, only, "So I didn't actually watch him go in."

-

"I don't really know him," she has to admit, as Weevil is helping her pack back in her room, stuffing warm sweaters and the sturdiest pants into a large cotton knapsack. It's all store-bought stiff, because she's never had to use it. She doesn't quite remember what she got it for. There must have been something.

"I'm just warning you here. Full disclosure." She pretends it's that she doesn't want Weevil to think she can work miracles (Find out where this boy has gone, how this boy thinks. Who she knew for years, and didn't at all because they'd never really spoke about many things honest and real. She does that a lot; it's easy.)

She pretends this, because if she says what she feels (that she knows she'll find him) it might not happen. Like some sort of jinx.

She leaves a note for her father on his bedside table.

 _"Tell them I'm visiting mom. Pick a really large state."_

-

They strap her stuff with his stuff to the bike that will have to be traded in later. He says he has a cousin that they (they are: Lamb, Leo, any and every deputy, so this is really what it's like, what he meant when he said she was not his kind, when she wasn't an _accomplice_ \-- us against them), someone that they won't think about. Through marriage.

She thinks it's funny, that his whole family rides bikes, and he laughs. She pictures five year olds tottering, fat fingers wrapped around miniature chrome handlebars, and laughs with him, helmet coated forehead pressed against his back and hands clutched tight into the pockets of his jacket. He's warm, at first, and it's nice.

It's ages of humming, bumps and rumbles jittering her teeth and, 'where is he, how is he, what are they doing, what has he done, how can she save him,' and then she can't think of much anything except that her legs hurt, and it's cold.

It all hurts, but she's trying to remember the places he said he would visit, if he were his mother. The places they were going to check next, when they were the first type of different people. Version 2.0

She tells Weevil about what Logan maybe said, over the lukewarm gas station coffee they pick up down the block from his cousin's. They had bought maps too, and they spread these out over his cousin's kitchen table. The edges of his niece's pink and brown crayon drawings peek out between the pages, like make believe side streets and shortcuts. At this point, she thinks, she'd almost take them.

They decide, instead, to follow the basic creed of both your average teenager and certified private investigator: It is a commonly accepted Millennium truth that there's a website for everything.

It is, thus, a fairly straightforward task to scope out every low rent motel that doesn't _actually_ require ID.

-

She would play a hooker if she'd brought the clothes for it. Not quite scrawny enough, no scabs on the skin, her teeth too clean and white, but she's been through hell and back, and she thinks it shows.

She would if she could, but instead it's abusive, volatile boyfriend that you wouldn't want to ask too many questions. They come for a tiny, cheap suite, she limps to the washroom, and Weevil scans the guestbook as the clerk inevitably follows.

Logan is still Logan, and she knows enough to be certain he would leave an obvious too-clever name. He just wouldn't be able to help himself.

-

They're not too different.

On day five she places an ad in the NepWeekly classifieds: "Mercury seeks assistance in Washington".

The noble sheriff in Seattle is a great mental image. She's heard it near never stops raining.

\--

It's not careful, or pointed, how they don't talk about Lilly until day thirteen, or fourteen. It just happens, and then they pass the right billboard, and they're both thinking it.

She loved her, god she loved her, and she cries a little. It's softer than it was before (less hard on her lungs, less ragged) and she tells him about the dreams she doesn't have anymore, with Lilly's twirling, always always dancing, bright, blood tinged frame. She didn't expect to miss them.

She asks, "Tell me, did you dream about her?"

He did -- of course he did.

And then it is five more days before there is nothing else to say about Lilly. She's said it, said everything. There isn't any more inside of her. She doesn't know what to do with herself.

She can't even talk about something else, and really mean _LillyLillyLillyLillyLilly_. It would have to mean whatever it is.

This has never happened before. Not since she was so young that all she can remember is: very green grass, her mother laughing; gaping, forever length wading pool, her father's large far away face and shiny star shaped medal to reach for.

She has to ask him now, because there's nothing else, "Why are you doing this?"

He could have bought, broken himself an alibi. He could have just left. He could still have his bike, which he loved, she could feel how he loved it. He doesn't clutch this one the same, doesn't touch it like he could with his eyes closed. He doesn't test that, close his eyes every so often when he drives, to keep the feel of it inside him.

"Maybe I do," he says, and she can feel the shrug roll through his shoulders under her arms, sun baked leather rising and falling to scrape at her cheek. She has no idea what he's talking about.

She doesn't ask more until breakfast, which is a thickly gravyed Denny's steak dinner with a soggy side of fries. They're feeling playful, battling with silverware and sharp plastic edged menus, and she only hurts a little when he wins, smirks, and says, "Who's your daddy?"

She only misses her father a little, and it's not for bad reasons. There's just so much room up in her head for missing, and there are so many people.

"Maybe I do," he says, "Maybe I know him," when she gets carefully around to asking what he meant, poking at the corners.

He says it while he's unfolding his napkin to scrub at a spot he'd left on the table, just says it like that, like it's nothing to say those types of things to her. Like maybe she never even noticed that he had let her in. What it meant that he trusts her to trust him.

She sits and wonders, while he's in the bathroom washing his hands, how she never noticed -- when it was that she fell in love with even one of them, fell in love with the both of them. She doesn't kiss him, though, until he's strapping on her helmet, turned to face her, kick stand still up.

She doesn't kiss him until she licks the pad of her thumb and rubs at the high end of his cheek, scrubbing at a smudge of road dirt, and he angles, scowling, away from her.

He looks about eleven years old in this moment, and she remembers, suddenly, how young they are. She remembers, suddenly, a shaky clean shaven freshman reciting someone else's poetry. She had wanted to touch him in that moment. They were laughing at him how she'd never been laughed at (not yet) – nothing but ugly – and she didn't know enough to know how awful it was. She couldn't have guessed. But she wanted to touch him, brush her fingers down his arm to the pulse at his wrist. She didn't, never said, did anything. But she had _wanted_ , and it had been strange. She wasn't used to not having. And she didn't know why she wanted to comfort him. Why she thought he, of all people, would need any comfort.

She's still unsure if he needs this, needs her, but she thinks he could love her, and when he did she would believe him.

She asks,"If you -- can you tell me, does he want to come home?" and knows that she's known all along. She said it against his mouth, words smudged between stupid gasping breaths, so that she could unsay it, and ask again when she's ready to stop.

"We'll leave him a note," she says, and they do, when they find him.

And it's blank, slid under his tight door, her nails sanded down from scrabbling at the concrete. Because she could have said, _'I'm sorry'_ , _'I miss you'_ , ' _sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry_ ', _'I didn't mean it'_ , except those are the dumbest words alive.

It's paper, and it's not even the nice stuff - torn off the bedside table of some crap hotel, the name rubbed lead color raw by pencil tip, but it means they thought; they tried.

It's enough.

She thinks he'll understand.


End file.
